Signature advertisers: suggestions?

[yahoo62278]

However: the forum will never intermediate these transactions. We will not touch the money involved or perform any sort of "screening", etc.

There are about 20 new " ICO managers/Teams" popping up weekly. I'm not saying the forum should "screen" all of them per say, but maybe some Merit restrictions and rank restrictions should be put into place before anyone can offer managing services?

I don't think think it's out of the question to require teams to use a forum escrow or must hire a manager from an approved list.(There is no actual list unless you count https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5032713.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4412712.0 these) An official list could be made but then the forum is basically endorsing the users put on the list, or the forum could ask a disclaimer to be added to any list be made by the community.

Users that have shown interest in the quality of their posts and posting habits IMO are more likely to actually care about the campaigns they manage. More likely to care about spam.

I also like the suggestion of no token paying signature campaigns allowed. Maybe also include translations as well. I think facebook, twitter, youtube, instragram, reddit, blogs etc are fine as they are not spamming the forum. Just my opinion

[vlom]

Honestly, I find signature advertisements distasteful, and it is not impossible that I will someday ban the practice.

finally. i send you all the merit i have. but i dont have any.

my advice: ban it asap.

EDIT: @theymos: only 4 (including myself) dont earn something with their post in this topic. thats all you have to know

[Hhampuz]

I think enforcing Signature Campaign Guidelines will do the forum more good.

Agreed! I know I'm not the best manager out here but I try not to incentivize spam while making sure everyone follow some rules to make sure the overall environment gets better.

The only other suggestion I can think of, is something I've suggested before: only allow signature campaigns that pay in Bitcoin. The ones paying in made-up tokens have no real cost for the ICO, and thus don't mind "paying" for spam. If the campaign pays in Bitcoin, at least they have something to lose.

I can't stress enough how good this would be. Honestly, if we were to remove all the ICO signatures it would probably not be as big of a problem. I tried my hand at an ICO Campaign once, for about two weeks until it went to shit and I'm never going to bother with it again. As mentioned by yahoo as well there's several "Bounty Manager" teams popping up in Services daily, I doubt any of them would have the rep to actually work on a smaller sized organic signature campaign for a bitcoin mixer, as an example.

Not to mention that I've seen some of these "teams" have groups on telegram with thousands upon thousands of newbie accounts signed up to join any new bounty they'll launch. I for one would not miss it one bit if removed.

[Quickseller]

I don’t think theymos will restrict campaigns to those that only pay in bitcoin because of free market issues. This would clearly benefit those who participate in dig deals.

I am not a huge fan of enforcing the “signature campaign guidelines” for managers because it will lead to campaigns being run(managed) off the site when advertisers are banned. This is also why forcing campaigns to pay in bitcoin will not work.

I would note that it is not uncommon for a group of people to wear similar signatures because they hold a similar stance on issues they feel strongly about or want to support similar statements.

[bill gator]

it will lead to campaigns being run off the site when advertisers are banned.

Either I misunderstand what you're trying to say or I don't see the problem with losing these campaigns. If a campaign is unable to uphold the Signature Campaign guidelines, then what exactly is the issue with them moving off-site? Unless you mean to say the management of the campaign will be taken off-site and the participants will remain here.

It would be interesting if there was some kind of a process that would determine who can appropriately manage a campaign, sort of like there is a process that determines which trust values appear by default. This of course leaves bias as a part of the equation and means we'll have to hammer out some criteria. Done properly though, I don't think it would be too terrible to enforce, sort of like DT is somewhat self-sufficient (at least, that's the goal).

[Quickseller]

it will lead to campaigns being run off the site when advertisers are banned.

Either I misunderstand what you're trying to say or I don't see the problem with losing these campaigns. If a campaign is unable to uphold the Signature Campaign guidelines, then what exactly is the issue with them moving off-site? Unless you mean to say the management of the campaign will be taken off-site and the participants will remain here.

Yes, that is exactly what I am saying. I edited my post for clarity.

It would be interesting if there was some kind of a process that would determine who can appropriately manage a campaign, sort of like there is a process that determines which trust values appear by default. This of course leaves bias as a part of the equation and means we'll have to hammer out some criteria. Done properly though, I don't think it would be too terrible to enforce, sort of like DT is somewhat self-sufficient (at least, that's the goal).

I don't think theymos wants to be involved in giving licenses to get to perform a job.

[bill gator]

Would it be a difficult/unfeasible task to enforce a rule that users advertising for banned advertisers are given a few days to remove their signature before being suspended/banned?

I don't think theymos wants to be involved in giving licenses to get to perform a job.

I meant more along the lines of a community-enforcement; similar to the direction DT is taking.

[Quickseller]

Would it be a difficult task to enforce a rule that users advertising for banned advertisers are given a few days to remove their signature before being suspended/banned?

Would it be difficult to enforce?

From a technical standpoint, no. It would be very easy.

From a fairness standpoint, yes. There could be some people who are advertising a company outside of the signature campaign, for example because they have an ownership stake in the company, or work for the company in a role that benefits when the company has increased sales/volume.

Even if this rule were to be enforced, campaigns could be managed entirely outside of the forum, which would make it difficult to rule out someone using a bunch of accounts to wear a particular signature, and post a bunch of garbage, making it look like the campaign has a lot of people enrolled making lots of shit posts, when in reality, these people have nothing to do with the campaign.

I don't think theymos wants to be involved in giving licenses to get to perform a job.

I meant more along the lines of a community-enforcement; similar to the direction DT is taking.

That is still a de-facto license. I also have a feeling changes will eventually be made to the DT system moving it in the opposite direction from where it has recently gone.

[theymos]

What is the problem we're trying to solve with this?

Increase the forum's usefulness for its members.

Also, forum systems can be designed to encourage good behavior. For example, if I got everyone involved in sig ads to use a forum-provided signature management system / stats tracker, then I could show only a "modified impressions" value which takes the real impressions value and subtracts from it if the person is getting posts deleted by mods (or something like that).

[bill gator]

From a fairness standpoint, yes. There could be some people who are advertising a company outside of the signature campaign, for example because they have an ownership stake in the company, or work for the company in a role that benefits when the company has increased sales/volume.

I don't know if I agree that it is fair to allow someone to continue to advertise for a banned advertiser, simply because they have an increased personal stake in that advertiser. I might be misunderstanding your statement again, though, so please correct me if I'm wrong.

As far as I know there currently aren't any campaigns that are operating off-site, but admittedly this is not something I keep up with in any capacity. It would seem only banned advertisers would have any reason to do so, but I might be wrong about this. Regularly it is very easy to tell if someone is genuinely associated with a campaign, because campaign managers are extremely transparent with their spreadsheets and applications are normally public. Granted this isn't a rule, but it would seem an easy guideline to adhere to if you want to run a legitimate campaign.

I'm mostly thinking out-loud, and I see where you're coming from, but there seems to be applicable answers to these questions.

That is still a de-facto license.

I feel like we're playing word-games at this point. If there were nothing resembling a "license" then there would be no enforcement of any guidelines and we'd be where we currently are (or worse).

[bitart]

...
My idea would be something around 1 merit for 2-4 activity periods, or we could make this to rank dependent or we could make it both posts and merit related (no idea of a formula yet and brain not helping kronk now)
But seriously, if you have 2000 posts and 1 merit in one year....there is something fishy happening.
...

I like this one. I'm thinking about something similar.
Let's say, you have to "pay" 1 merit/month to be able to wear a paid signature (and you can only use your earned merits for it).
This way, there's no need to change the merit requirements for ranking up, because newbies can still become juniors if they manage to get 1 merit, juniors can rank up if they get more, etc...
So they will have a chance to become even a legendary sometime in the future.
But if they choose to use their earned merits to be able to take part in a signature campaign (in order to monetize their time spent here instead of ranking up), that's their own decision.
This way, you can stop spammers, because they will quickly fall back to newbie rank, if they take part in a signature campaing, but they don't post useful stuff.
If the members are taking part in a signature campaing and they post quality stuff, they will manage to rank up parallel with monetizing their skills and time (ideal situation).
1 merit per month is really not much for a good poster, but will stop spammers on the short run (I mean they would just have to stop spamming for money if they run out of merit. If they want, they can spam for free, but they won't... or they have to start posting quality stuff, if they want to wear signature again).

Individual signatures have to remain free in the future, and we should not restrict them to e.g. black and white or small font, etc... If someone wants to advertise himself with a kind of colorful signature like the paid campaigns have, why not...

The question is, how to decide if a signature is paid or free?
If theymos implements a kind of central signature database from where the campaign members can choose their paid signature, this would solve the problem for the decent campaigns.
But how to restrict shady ICOs, if they start to manage their campaigns off site and members say that their signatures are not paid? I know that it's possible to prove that they are paid in the end, but it requires effort and time from forum stuff or members.

Or we decide that having a signature is a kind of premium stuff here and that's not available for everyone (like the avatar). It's still better that you know that if you have the necessary merits, you can set up a signature (this is a kind of motivatoin to post quality stuff), compared to the situation when theymos just ban all the signatures...

[Ranly123]

I don't see any problem with regards to signature campaigns. What triggers me is that even those scam projects are allowed to announce their bounty campaigns in this forum and even ask for more posts that makes bounty hunters looks like spamming. Maybe change the payment method on signature campaigns and bounty campaigns from token payment to Bitcoin or ethereum payments. In that way, scam projects will think twice before engaging on their anomalies.

[jackg]

I'm not sure about the idea of banning them outright. It's already possible to hide signatures and block those who look like they're in a signature campaign.

Merit limits could be enforced I guess but I doubt it'll do much. There are lots of users here that are in signature campaigns and a lot of prole go over their maximum weekly limit and just keep posting anyway...

If I were going off donations for helping people in the time I've been here and helped people, I'd have $40 in three years...

Renting signatures to people as a tax and donating the proceeds to charity would be a nice idea. I feel if sigs were removed completely, a lot of users will come for a random trades and then go again there's be no community or reason for the trust and merit system because someone will buy something with money they've earnt in fiat and go again until they next have a nice amount of money to plunge into more goods six months to a year later.


My point in this post is that I've come across users who have lived off signature campaigns in the past and it's helped them in between jobs to stop them being completely cut off. There's the issue that quite a few of these are spammy but a few high merit earners in the past I've known personally to do this sort of thing.

[DarkStar_]

Also, forum systems can be designed to encourage good behavior. For example, if I got everyone involved in sig ads to use a forum-provided signature management system / stats tracker, then I could show only a "modified impressions" value which takes the real impressions value and subtracts from it if the person is getting posts deleted by mods (or something like that).

I don't think enough posts are getting deleted at the moment for it to make a difference.

[fillippone]

Honestly, I find signature advertisements distasteful, and it is not impossible that I will someday ban the practice.

finally. i send you all the merit i have. but i dont have any.

my advice: ban it asap.

EDIT: @theymos: only 4 (including myself) dont earn something with their post in this topic. thats all you have to know

I am not earning with my signature, while a am giving away knowledge.
Sent you merits, even if I don’t like to ban something, I think the effort put in those signature campaign could be better put at work on bitcoin itself.

[TheBeardedBaby]

We need penalty for those who spam a lot, if you have like 3 deleted posts by moderator for the past 2 activity cycles then your signature should be off for at least a month.

Some clear rules for the bounty managers + a requirement to become a manger you need to earn minimum 10 merit.

If you cannot post/recognise quality content, you cannot properly manage a campaign and most likely allow spammy participants.

[suchmoon]

What is the problem we're trying to solve with this?

Increase the forum's usefulness for its members.

Also, forum systems can be designed to encourage good behavior. For example, if I got everyone involved in sig ads to use a forum-provided signature management system / stats tracker, then I could show only a "modified impressions" value which takes the real impressions value and subtracts from it if the person is getting posts deleted by mods (or something like that).

I like the positive reinforcement vibe but I think I'm too cynical to see how this can work without some stick to go with that carrot. Shitty campaigns already cost next to nothing to run (paying in worthless tokens) and would cost even less if the forum provides better management tools so they'll just leech and keep spamming. They don't seem to care about post quality or if the post gets deleted.

We need penalty for those who spam a lot, if you have like 3 deleted posts by moderator for the past 2 activity cycles then your signature should be off for at least a month.

Yeah, something like that, although 3 is way too low. I think I got 3 deleted just recently and I swear it wasn't my fault

[TheBeardedBaby]

Yeah, something like that, although 3 is way too low. I think I got 3 deleted just recently and I swear it wasn't my fault

When I say deleted by mods I don't mean the posts remove when a thread gets deleted. I also gave some posts deleted because warning the newbies in their threads and they get deleted.

What I mean are the posts reported by others and marked as good. so you have been actually reported for the specific post.

[Jeremycoin]

I always think that people will come out with more creative ways of doing things in an area with limited tools. Just like in sandbox video games, you'll see a lot more creative gamers in the simpler game with limited capabilities and vice versa.

My point is that serving signature campaigner with greater tools will supposedly make things easier for them, but it will decrease the creative mind out of them. This doesn't really benefit the forum itself, but it does give some to the community.

[MadZ]

Given the two most "active" sub-forums are alt-coin related, it is safe to say signature campaigns have a large effect on the forum.

A small change I think might benefit this ecosystem would be dividing the "Bounty" sub-forum between campaigns that pay in a currently tradable tokens/coins and those that pay in yet to be minted coins. Essentially, escrowable vs. non-escrowable campaigns. This would serve as something of a quality filter, while still remaining fairly hands off in terms of actual screening.